Free Tool to Help You Better Understand What is Inside a Citrix License File Update: Version 1.1 supports XenDesktop Licenses in Addition to XenApp Licenses Most Citrix products rely heavily on license files. While the basic format of a license file is somewhat documented, […] Read more
Undocumented Changes to the Cluster.exe Command Line Tool in Server 2008 While working on the next edition of my book I found several documentation errors on Microsoft’s Technet pages describing the command line tools of Windows Server 2008. One of the […] Read more
x64? My Terminal Servers Run Just Fine With 32 Bits and 8/12/16 GB RAM! A recent discussion with a colleague brought this topic to my attention which I have not discussed in detail in my series on Windows x64: Memory scalability of 32-bit Terminal […] Read more
The Most Interesting New Feature of Server 2008 Terminal Services / XenApp 5.0? Why, Font Smoothing! Much has been written about the many new features of Windows Server 2008 Terminal Services. Now, with the upcoming release of Citrix XenApp 5.0 (Project Delaware), Citrix updates its best-selling […] Read more
Free Tool – List Registry Links (REG_LINK) Recently I got into a very interesting discussion with my colleague Nicholas Dille on various aspects of Windows x64. One question he brought up was especially intriguing: knowing about registry […] Read more
Windows x64 Part 7: File System & Registry Redirection, Registry Reflection This is the seventh part of a mini-series on Windows x64, focusing on behind the scene changes in the operating system. In the last article I explained that mixed 32-/64-bit […] Read more
Windows x64 Part 6: COM, DLLs and Processes This is the sixth part of a mini-series on Windows x64, focusing on behind the scene changes in the operating system. In the last article I discussed how 32-bit applications […] Read more
Windows x64 Part 5: NTVDM, Services, WoW64 This is the fifth part of a mini-series on Windows x64, focusing on behind the scene changes in the operating system. In the last article I explained that the 64-bit […] Read more
Windows x64 Part 4: Code Trees, Drivers This is the fourth part of a mini-series on Windows x64, focusing on behind the scene changes in the operating system. In the last article I wrote about the changes […] Read more
Windows x64 Part 3: CPUs, AMD64, Intel 64, EM64T, Itanium This is the third part of a mini-series on Windows x64, focusing on behind the scene changes in the operating system. In the first two articles (here and here) I […] Read more
Windows x64 Part 2: Kernel Memory, /3GB, PTEs, (Non-) Paged Pool This is the second part of a mini-series on Windows x64, focusing on behind the scene changes in the operating system. In the first article I explained key concepts of […] Read more
Windows x64 Part 1: Virtual Memory I will start the new year with a small series on Windows x64 in which I will explain why 64-bit computing is not only necessary but inevitable. I will then […] Read more
Why Vista's System Restore is Dangerous and What to do About it Recently a colleague of mine had a problem: by mistake he had deleted part of the software registry hive (HKLM\Software) of his Vista machine while trying out some code. When […] Read more
Another IT Legend Some time ago I wrote about a misconception so common that it might pass as an IT legend – the confusion of HKU\.Default with the default user’s registry hive. Recently […] Read more
Group Policy Preferences: Why Windows Server 2008 Will Change the Way You Work I confess: I like group policies. They are and have always been a great way of managing computer and user settings ever since their conception and introduction with Windows 2000. […] Read more
Free Tool: Refresh the Desktop Programmatically I recently had the requirement to refresh the Windows desktop after certain changes had been made to Explorer’s registry entries. This seems simple at first: klick on any item on […] Read more
New Blog in Town My colleague Nicholas Dille has started his own blog. Nicholas is a very clever guy whose opinion I value very much. I have often worked and laughed with him in […] Read more
Why is (Almost) Everybody Wrong About HKU\.Default? Most technical folks have stumbled across the registry hive HKEY_USERS\.Default at some point. Many of them think they know what it is used for. Interestingly, most who do are wrong. […] Read more
Soup Up Your Terminal Server: Optimizing Explorer’s Network Performance Update: The ADM file can now be downloaded here. I recently came across a post in the Windows Server Performance Team’s blog that lists several registry values which can be […] Read more
Dirquota – Automagically Manage File System Quotas Did you know that Windows Server contains a file system quota component? “Of course”, you will say. It was introduced with Windows 2000 and is completely useless since it only […] Read more
Undocumented Program Neighborhood Command Line Switches Nearly every professional working with Citrix Presentation Server knows about Program Neighborhood (PN), and some may even use it frequently. It was first introduced in MetaFrame 1.8 and is used […] Read more
Taming Black Holes: Parallel Session Creation Have you ever tried to log on to a terminal server and, after entering your credentials, been forced to stare at a grey screen for a lengthy period of time […] Read more
ClearType Bandwidth Revisited – Testing 32 Bit Color Depth In an earlier post I wrote about how bandwidth requirements of the RDP protocol are affected by enabling font smoothing (ClearType over RDP version 6) on Windows Server 2008. Jan, […] Read more
Programmatically Determining Terminal Server Mode on Windows Server 2008 A question on the terminal services newsgroup brought this topic to my attention: how can be determined programmatically if a Windows Server 2008 system is a terminal server and whether […] Read more
Bandwidth Requirements for ClearType over RDP In an earlier post I wrote about a great technology that finally makes it into terminal services with Windows Server 2008: ClearType or Font Smoothing, as it is sometimes called. […] Read more
Windows Server 2008 (R2) Component Posters [Updated 2009-12-11 for Server 2008 R2] Microsoft has published two visually very appealing posters which depict in great detail important components of its upcoming OS Server 2008. The poster on […] Read more
Windows Server 2008: Architectural Changes Relevant to Terminal Services #2 This post covers a technology developed by Microsoft Research in the late 90s that finally made it into terminal services: ClearType. ClearType As is sometimes the case with technology, it […] Read more
Windows Server 2008: Architectural Changes Relevant to Terminal Services #1 I will start this blog with a small series of posts that describe changes to the architecture of Windows Server 2008 that are relevant to Terminal Services. Read more
